Managing Customer Reimbursements for Self-Booked Travel Expenses

Rebecca Grossman · 2025-08-01 21:28:12.749973+00

Hi - one more from me on a Friday night :slightly_smiling_face: How do you manage reimbursing customers when they attend your events and they do not want you to book travel for them? We are having a really hard time with finance on this. We had a top customer who spoke at an event book his own hotel/flights and finance is asking for a W9! Yikes.

Managing Customer Reimbursements for Self-Booked Travel Expenses | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

15 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Lauren Turner
·
Can you send them a gift card for the hotel chain they’re staying at (or Airbnb), airline they’re using, etc? That way they’re still booking their own travel but you don’t have to get stuck with a ton of process and paperwork.
➕1
Daniel Palay
·
Do y’all have a booking platform? Like Navan that y’all use internally? Rebecca Grossman
Julie Neumeister
·
We ask the customer for their routing number, account number, bank name, and bank address, and pass that to our accounting team for reimbursement.
1
Julie Neumeister
·
We offer to take the info over the call if the customer prefers (which we did in the most recent case)
Julie Neumeister
·
I'm not sure what the process looks like on the accounting side, but that's what they asked for and we didn't get anymore hassle lol
Rebecca Grossman
·
Daniel Palay yes - we use Fluid. That is how we book for them.
Daniel Palay
·
So we use Navan and can generate a link for them to book their travel using the system as a guest user. So then allows us to pay for it on our corporate card, but allows them to make all of their choices
Rebecca Grossman
·
Oh - very cool. I will ask about that.
Rebecca Grossman
·
How do you reimburse uber or other ground transport? Daniel Palay
Lauren Stefano
·
We didn't end up needing to do this, but our plan was to use Ramp, which is our expense management system. We were planning to issue customers a temporary Ramp card with an appropriate spending limit that they could use to book travel, pay uber, etc. That way, the expenses would go straight to our corp card, and we would be able to monitor costs as they came in (and shut down the card if needed)
Lacey Butler
·
Out of curiosity, why didn’t the customer want you to book the travel for them? (Echoing Daniel that Navan is awesome with guest links & the ability to set a budget!) For transport, I’ve done a mix of car service pickups and sending Uber gift cards in advance of the trip.
Daniel Palay
·
Rebecca Grossman I think a hybrid of what I did and what Lauren Stefano talked about might be a great idea. That way you can cover the big expenses of airfare and hotel with the booking system and then let them use the budget and vendor restricted card for the transport
Rebecca Grossman
·
Lacey Butler it was for an event that a different team ran and they did not realize how hard it would be to get the reimbursement. We are working together to have a better solution going forward.
Lauren Stefano
·
Lacey Butler I was also wary of being in the middle of the travel arrangements. By letting the customer book on their own, we would make sure that they get exactly the flights that they want and that if there are any delays/cancellations or other issues they are in a position to resolve it directly (either with the booking platform or the airline)
Lacey Butler
·
I’ve done both: in scenarios where we book, I ask the customer if they have preferred flights (and FF numbers) and work with a travel agency to set it up. The ticket is issued to the customer, so they can make modifications, check in on the app, et al. And Rebecca— yikes, I’ve been there. I know this is a big pain and not the best experience for your customer but hopefully it was smoothed over and now you have oodles of ways to avoid it in the future ☺️

Lauren Turner
·
Can you send them a gift card for the hotel chain they’re staying at (or Airbnb), airline they’re using, etc? That way they’re still booking their own travel but you don’t have to get stuck with a ton of process and paperwork.
➕1
Daniel Palay
·
Do y’all have a booking platform? Like Navan that y’all use internally? Rebecca Grossman
Julie Neumeister
·
We ask the customer for their routing number, account number, bank name, and bank address, and pass that to our accounting team for reimbursement.
1
Julie Neumeister
·
We offer to take the info over the call if the customer prefers (which we did in the most recent case)
Julie Neumeister
·
I'm not sure what the process looks like on the accounting side, but that's what they asked for and we didn't get anymore hassle lol
Rebecca Grossman
·
Daniel Palay yes - we use Fluid. That is how we book for them.
Daniel Palay
·
So we use Navan and can generate a link for them to book their travel using the system as a guest user. So then allows us to pay for it on our corporate card, but allows them to make all of their choices
Rebecca Grossman
·
Oh - very cool. I will ask about that.
Rebecca Grossman
·
How do you reimburse uber or other ground transport? Daniel Palay
Lauren Stefano
·
We didn't end up needing to do this, but our plan was to use Ramp, which is our expense management system. We were planning to issue customers a temporary Ramp card with an appropriate spending limit that they could use to book travel, pay uber, etc. That way, the expenses would go straight to our corp card, and we would be able to monitor costs as they came in (and shut down the card if needed)
Lacey Butler
·
Out of curiosity, why didn’t the customer want you to book the travel for them? (Echoing Daniel that Navan is awesome with guest links & the ability to set a budget!) For transport, I’ve done a mix of car service pickups and sending Uber gift cards in advance of the trip.
Daniel Palay
·
Rebecca Grossman I think a hybrid of what I did and what Lauren Stefano talked about might be a great idea. That way you can cover the big expenses of airfare and hotel with the booking system and then let them use the budget and vendor restricted card for the transport
Rebecca Grossman
·
Lacey Butler it was for an event that a different team ran and they did not realize how hard it would be to get the reimbursement. We are working together to have a better solution going forward.
Lauren Stefano
·
Lacey Butler I was also wary of being in the middle of the travel arrangements. By letting the customer book on their own, we would make sure that they get exactly the flights that they want and that if there are any delays/cancellations or other issues they are in a position to resolve it directly (either with the booking platform or the airline)
Lacey Butler
·
I’ve done both: in scenarios where we book, I ask the customer if they have preferred flights (and FF numbers) and work with a travel agency to set it up. The ticket is issued to the customer, so they can make modifications, check in on the app, et al. And Rebecca— yikes, I’ve been there. I know this is a big pain and not the best experience for your customer but hopefully it was smoothed over and now you have oodles of ways to avoid it in the future ☺️